


baptism by fire

by cosmicbees



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Kissing, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Soft Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, it's just introspective neil smooching andrew, thats the whole plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:46:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26489644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicbees/pseuds/cosmicbees
Summary: neil and andrew share a bed as well as some secrets“Those shitty twin beds we have in Fox Tower?” Neil sighs, “That’s the first bed I’ve been able to call my own since I was a kid. I know it’s stupid but something so small feels so big when you don’t have anything else in the world.”Neil doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t speak the words that sit on the back of his tongue. Theyou told me to stayandit’s my home too, because you let it be.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 15
Kudos: 188





	baptism by fire

**Author's Note:**

> howdy! This fic builds directly off of the scene in TKM where Andrew and Neil share a bed when they're in the mountains with the other foxes. I really thought there was a lot of unexplored potential there, and wanted to see it through to the end

Sleep finds Neil slowly most nights.

Too many years spent running from his past has made a fickle friend of sleep for Neil. With a loaded gun tucked beneath his pillow and paranoia creeping in from the dim corners of Neil’s brain, it had become impossible to give himself over to sleep entirely. Curled up beside his mother in borrowed beds, Neil would spend hours counting the divots in unfamiliar ceilings of motels and vacant houses waiting for his thoughts to quiet enough for sleep to darken the edges of his consciousness for a short while. 

Even in his dorm room at Fox Tower, in the first real bed that Neil had slept in since his mother’s death–the first bed that Neil could definitively call his own since he and his mother had fled from his childhood home in the dead of night, sleep is often hard to come by. 

Now, faced with yet another unfamiliar bed, Neil is flooded with memories of too many nights of disrupted sleep, where the only constants were the weight of his mother sleeping stiff-limbed beside him, and the cold, hard barrel of a .45 just inches from his head. 

“What did Aaron say to you?” Andrew’s words pull Neil from his thoughts, and he snaps his eyes from the crisp white linens to the foot of the bed where Andrew has unzipped Neil’s duffle bag and pulled out the pair of faded pajama pants along with a massive, long-sleeve Palmetto State shirt that Neil had packed. 

Neil considers his response briefly before brushing aside the flare of irritation that rises in him at the reminder of Aaron. “Nothing.” 

“Don’t lie to me,” Andrew’s voice is tense with impatience. 

“I’m not,” Neil huffs, stepping towards the folded sleep clothes, and reaching out for them. “When has Aaron ever said anything worth acknowledging?” 

Andrew’s fingers curl into the cotton of the t-shirt, but his expression is blank when he presses, “Neil.” 

Neil meets Andrew’s gaze. The look in them is intense, digging into Neil’s very soul when Andrew narrows his eyes minutely in question, but still Neil refuses to look away. When he speaks next, the words are quiet, coming out barely above a whisper. “Can you help me?” 

The abrupt change of subject doesn’t phase Andrew at all. He simply blinks, and, understanding the request immediately, gathers Neil’s sleep clothes up in one arm, crossing the room in a few short steps. “Sit,” he commands, pressing his open palm to the center of Neil’s chest and pushing until the back of his legs meet the bed. Neil lets himself bounce on the edge of the mattress as his knees buckle beneath him, and he looks up. Andrew is watching him closely. 

His face is the same blank slate as always, but his eyes are heavy, piercing through Neil’s skin as they rake over his body. Neil can only imagine how small he looks under Andrew’s scrutiny, curled into himself on the edge of the king-size bed, and dressed in a shirt that is easily three sizes too big for him. The loose, billowy fabric of the oversized t-shirt keeps the shirt from clinging to the gauze and medical tape that crisscross Neil’s bandaged arms, but it makes Neil look tiny–like a child playing dress up in his father’s clothing. 

Neil grows self conscious after several long minutes pass under Andrew’s unflinching stare, and drops his gaze as he curls his own fingers around the hem of his shirt. He doesn’t notice Andrew moving in his peripherals until his hands are wrapped gently around Neil’s, tugging his hands away from his shirt. 

“Josten,” Andrew’s command is somehow wrapped inside that single word, and Neil lets his arms fall limply to his side as he looks up at Andrew again. His fingers curl in Neil’s collar, and the tug of cotton against Neil’s skin as Andrew pulls the shirt up and over his head is just shy of being too rough. 

This–Andrew dressing and undressing Neil–has become a ritual of sorts since the return from Baltimore, but Andrew’s careful hands pulling the clothes from Neil’s battered body somehow makes something spark deep in his gut anyway. Andrew is sure not to touch Neil as he undresses him, cautious in his movements in a way that makes Neil ache. Andrew has seen Neil in far less clothing than this, has _touched_ him in far less clothing, and Neil has to wonder why he’s so wary about something as simple as this. 

“It’s okay if you touch me,” Neil murmurs through a grimace as he tries to guide one of his arms into the clean shirt. Andrew’s steady hands freeze, “I won’t break.” 

“You’re already broken,” Andrew levels him with an unimpressed look. 

Neil feels a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth. It’s a fragile thing, but it feels real. “The damage is already done. You couldn’t make it any worse.” 

Andrew says nothing, but seems to accept the statement as fact, letting his knuckles skim across Neil’s chest as he pulls the shirt down over his sternum, and settles an open palm low on Neil’s stomach. Neil watches the way that Andrew’s eyes flick down to his mouth, and leans in a bit closer to close the distance between them when– 

“Andrew? Do you have any extra pillows? Aaron’s being a dick and won’t sha–” Nicky’s voice cuts through the quiet of the room as he pushes through the door to Andrew and Neil’s bedroom. Hardly a foot into the room, Nicky stops dead in his tracks as Andrew straightens his spine and stands tall, turning a venomous look toward Nicky. “Nevermind! It’s all good!” 

Neil catches a quick glimpse of Nicky’s wide eyes and shocked expression before spinning on his heel and scurrying from the room, closing the door behind him with a solid _thud_! Andrew is nearly to the door when Nicky slams it closed, and he reaches for the doorknob stiffly, wrapping his hand around cool brass before pausing at the sound of Neil’s voice. 

“Leave it,” Neil says softly. “It’s not like this is a secret anyway.” 

“There is no _this_.” Andrew responds, not bothering to look over his shoulder at Neil. It’s the echo of a sentiment Neil has heard from him before, but he doesn’t let the cold tone of Andrew’s voice cut too close to his heart. He still doesn’t know what _this_ is between the two of them anyway, but it’s something tangible and real. Something that makes Neil’s heart race in a way that only Exy does. Something he wants to hold on to for as long as he can. 

He doesn’t think Andrew wants to hear that, though, and he doesn’t want to speak the words aloud, so he pushes the thoughts as deep inside of him as he can before pushing himself from the edge of the bed. Neil crouches down to grab his pajama pants from where Andrew had dropped them on the floor just a moment before, and tries not to focus on the way his arms throb dully when he pulls them on. 

There’s a muted _click_ from the other side of the room and Neil notices that Andrew has turned the lock on the bedroom door. He turns his face into his shoulder to hide the stupid little smirk that tugs on his mouth. Andrew is still irritated by Nicky’s intrusion–Neil can see it in the furrow of his eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything to Neil about the interruption as he crosses the room and grabs his own sleep clothes from the end of the bed. 

The door of the _en suite_ bathroom swings shut behind Andrew, and Neil turns his attention to the bed again. Neil isn’t sure that Andrew wants to share a bed with him–or anyone for that matter, and although Andrew didn’t protest the sleeping assignments when Allison had listed them off just a short while before, he didn’t seem particularly enthused, either. 

Neil brushes his hesitation aside when the light seeping in from beneath the bathroom door flicks off, and pulls the blankets back so that he can crawl into the crisp, white linens. Neil sprawls out flat on his back, hands folded neatly on his stomach while he tries to take up as little of the bed as possible, laying down as close to the edge of the mattress as possible so that Andrew could take up all the space he wants. 

Neil doesn’t look as Andrew pulls the blankets back on the opposite side of the bed, but he closes his eyes and listens as the box spring creaks under Andrew’s weight. After the bed stops shifting, Neil turns his head to look at Andrew, and lets out a hollow, quiet laugh, “You’re so far away.” 

Andrew’s position mirrors Neil’s, with his body folded onto the edge of the bed and his hands at his sides. He doesn’t acknowledge Neil’s statement, but his head lolls to the side as he meets Neil’s gaze with a lazy blink. Neil spends a moment trying to memorize the way shadow falls across Andrew’s face in the dark, with just a hint of the moon’s glow catching the sharp cut of his cheekbones and making his blonde hair look silver-white against the pillow. Neil lets a fond smile curl across his lips. 

“I can’t remember the last time I slept in a bed this big,” when Neil speaks, the words are soft, half muffled into the pillow pressed against his cheek. “I thought the dorm beds were incredible, but this might just change my life .” 

Andrew looks at Neil for a long moment before replying, “It’s just a bed.” 

“Yeah,” Neil blinks his agreement, and lets silence settle between them for a moment while he pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, lost in thought. When he continues, it’s without a smile. “I didn’t have a bed in Millport. I slept on the floor in an abandoned house, or on the benches in the high school locker room. Before that, my mom and I slept wherever we thought was a safe enough place to close our eyes for more than a second at a time–mostly shitty truck stops and roach-infested motels.” 

“The worst one was in North Dakota,” Neil rolls onto his side, and tugs a spare pillow from behind his head, pulling it close to his chest and wrapping his arms tightly around it. Andrew’s mouth tugs down at the corner, but he doesn’t respond, so Neil continues, “It was in this little nowhere town that I can’t even remember the name of, but the heat was out and it was the middle of January. The owner of the place didn’t even want to lease the room, but he felt bad for us, I think. My mom and I had been on the road for two days and we’d only stopped long enough to get gas and take a piss, so we looked like shit. We were dirty, and hungry, and tired, and the guy let us have the room for twenty bucks. He gave us some cans of soup, too.” 

“He shouldn’t have charged you at all,” is all Andrew says. 

“He needed the money more than we did,” Neil sighs, pulling the pillow closer to himself, “My mom gave him fifty for the trouble though. She wasn’t so bad, you know? She scared me a lot sometimes when I was younger, because she’d scold me for just about anything after we left my father. If I went outside to play with other kids, or talked about Exy, or mentioned where I’d grown up, she’d get furious. If she was angry enough she’d hit me hard enough to leave bruises for weeks as a reminder of what she told me, but she just wanted to keep me safe at the end of the day.” 

Something violent flashes in Andrew’s eyes. “If someone beats you, it isn’t because they love you.” 

Neil opens his mouth again, ready to argue. His mother may have been heavy handed with him, but he never doubted that she cared for him deeply. She’d given up a life of relative security with her husband, and stolen away in the dead of night with their son in tow. With a single bag of clothing thrown over her shoulder, and a desperation to keep her only child safe, she’d dragged him as far from Baltimore as she could manage, stopping in England only long enough to tell her own family what she was doing, and ask for her brother’s blessing and connections. She wouldn’t subject her son to that world any more than she already had. 

It wasn’t what Andrew would recognize as love, but his mother wanted her son to have a life of his own, away from the violence and crime she’d grown numb to herself, and she was willing to die if that’s what it took. Neil didn’t know a mother’s love in the way that most people did, but he was at least safe when he was with her 

He closes his mouth, licks his lips, and continues carefully, “she was trying to keep me safe.” 

“Hurting you didn’t help keep you safe,” A scowl spreads across Andrew’s face, and Neil only offers him a sad smile in return. 

“She didn’t know any better,” Neil shrugs, “She grew up in a world where people did far worse things to try and teach her a lesson. Maybe she thought she was going easy on me.” 

Andrew’s eyes flash with anger, but he doesn’t try to argue with Neil again. 

“Those shitty twin beds we have in Fox Tower?” Neil sighs, “That’s the first bed I’ve been able to call my own since I was a kid. I know it’s stupid but something so small feels _so_ big when you don’t have anything else in the world.” 

Neil doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t speak the words that sit on the back of his tongue. The y _ou told me to stay_ and _it’s my home too, because you let it be_. 

There’s something significant about having a bed of his own and Neil knew that would make sense to Andrew, who had spent the better part of his childhood being shuffled between foster homes. To claim something as their own wasn’t something either of them were familiar with for a long time. Maybe, Neil thinks, that’s why he’d turned to Exy again after his mother’s death. Maybe that was why Andrew still played. It was the only thing that was permanent in their lives. 

When Neil was on the court, it was _his_ game, and no one could take that from him. Even in hand-me-down equipment, Neil could look at the racquet in his hand and say _this is mine_ , At the end of a game, he could put his few, scant belongings in a locker with his name on it, and keep it safe until he came back for it. 

Neil thinks Andrew played Exy for the same reason as Neil–because it gave him something he could claim as his own, even when it felt as though the world was working against him. He knew Andrew started playing in juvie, and although Andrew had said a thousand times that he hated Exy–that it was a pointless sport and he could stop playing any time and never feel the loss–when Coach Wymack offered to let him play without the influence of his court-mandated medications, he had agreed. Maybe it was the one tether to reality that Andrew could find with his name on it–an escape from the instability of the world around him. 

Exy had given them both stability, and had given them a purpose when everything around them was falling apart. It led them to Palmetto, and to Fox Tower; to safety, and to a future they never thought they could have; to their dorm room beds, and to one another. 

When Neil finally does speak again, the words stick to the inside of his mouth like cotton, and he struggles to articulate what he means. “Palmetto State is the first home I’ve had in my life where I feel safe. That’s the first bed I’ve slept in where I’ve been able to sleep more than an hour without waking up afraid of someone being on the other side of the door, waiting for me.” 

_Because you’re there_ , he doesn’t say, swallowing the words again. _Even here feels like home because of you._

Andrew blinks in what Neil thinks is understanding, and turns his face back to the ceiling. Neil assumes that’s the end of the conversation, and that he must have crossed a line somewhere. He probably said something that upset Andrew, or irritated him–usually Neil feels like he can read between the lines of Andrew’s blank expressions, but tonight he must have done something wrong. 

When Andrew does speak, it catches Neil off guard. “I couldn’t sleep in a bed for almost a year after I got sent to juvie.” 

Andrew says it to the darkness of the ceiling, not to him, and Neil thinks it best if he doesn’t speak. 

“I wasn’t able to sleep on a mattress, and if I did manage to fall asleep, the nightmares weren’t far behind.” Andrew’s voice is rough like sandpaper when he continues. “I’d fall asleep leaning against the wall, or lay on the floor. I had never slept in a bed where I felt safe before, and being in jail wasn’t any help.” 

Andrew doesn’t have to explain. Neil’s mind flashes an all too vivid image of Andrew’s hands curled around a headboard, knuckles white and blood red where it dripped onto rumpled bed sheets. Neil knew that Drake wasn’t the first to do that to Andrew. Beds were used for anything but sleeping too many times when Andrew was a child for them to be anything but a bad memory. 

The game they’re playing is familiar. By trading a truth for a truth, Andrew and Neil are taking down another brick from the walls they’ve built around themselves over a lifetime. There was a point where being this honest with Andrew was like pulling teeth–Neil only gave what he had to, and kept his cards close to his chest otherwise. 

Now it feels like Neil is playing 52 card pickup while Andrew watches over his shoulder. 

Neil doesn’t speak, too unwilling to push Andrew to share more than what he already has, and lets the silence fill the space between them. He keeps his eyes fixed to Andrew’s profile for so long that he is able to track the way that the moonlight filtering in through the window moves across Andrew’s features. 

Andrew looks to Neil out of the corner of his eyes and blinks at the ceiling. “You’re staring again.” 

Neil doesn’t respond to the accusation. He couldn’t deny it if he wanted, and so he chooses to share another truth with Andrew. “Aaron thinks I’m like Drake.” 

Andrew’s breath catches in his throat. Neil can see the way he goes still for a moment, stiff-limbed and pensive before he forces himself to take a rough breath in again. Turning his head towards Neil, Andrew asks, “yes or no?” 

Neil’s breathy “yes,” barely ekes its way out of his lungs before Andrew finds his way across the mattress, plopping down beside Neil, and reaching for him. 

“Aaron’s an idiot,” Andrew says simply, pulling Neil’s face close to his own. He pauses, lips just inches from Neil’s own, and waits for Neil’s little nod of encouragement before crushing their mouths together. 

Andrew tastes like cigarettes and toothpaste, and there’s a quiet part of Neil that tells him this is home. There’s an even louder part of him that wonders if Aaron isn’t right. 

_“Just wondering how you went from your whole I-don’t-date high horse to Andrew’s bed?”_ Aaron’s voice rings in Neil’s ears, bouncing around his head until it’s on the verge of swallowing him whole. “ _You saw Drake rape Andrew and realized he’s easy prey.”_

Neil was telling the truth when he said he doesn’t swing–Andrew is an exception to the rule in a way that even Neil can’t figure out. Now that Aaron has planted a seed of doubt, Neil wants to dig it out of his brain. He can’t be one of those people, he won’t let himself be. 

“You’re an idiot, too, Josten,” Andrew mumbles against Neil’s lips, pulling away to study Neil’s face for a moment. “Stop thinking so much.” 

“What if Aaron was right, though.” Neil’s voice is meek, and he scrubs a hand across his face. For a moment he thinks about pulling away from Andrew’s touch, but he’s already perched on the edge of the mattress, left with nowhere to go. 

The glare that Andrew sends towards Neil is icy and unimpressed. “You said yourself that you aren’t like him.” 

“I’m not, but–” 

Andrew fists his fingers in the front of Neil’s shirt to tug him back in, and hisses, “shut the fuck up.” 

Neil’s head spins at the touch. It errs on just this side of too rough when so much of his body is more cuts and burns than skin. Meeting Andrew’s gaze when he’s this close proves difficult, and Neil goes cross-eyed with the effort, letting out a breathy, “okay,” as Andrew’s lips ghost across his jaw. 

Neil’s arms are still wrapped around the pillow he’d grabbed earlier–a solid six inches of fluff stand between him and Andrew, but Neil’s hands are on the front lines, and he’s not quite sure where to put them right now. Already, his knuckles are skimming the cool cotton of Andrew’s t-shirt, but Neil knows he couldn’t move them without dragging his hands right across Andrew’s chest. 

But Andrew pulls Neil into a bruising kiss like he doesn’t notice the way Neil’s fingers twitch nervously between them. He’s got one hand fisted in Neil’s shirt, and the other is wrapped around the back of Neil’s neck, fingers pressed into the sensitive spot right at the base of his skull. 

They’ve kissed a few times now–enough that Neil shouldn’t be knocked breathless by the drag of Andrew’s teeth against his lower lip and the way Andrew licks hungrily into his mouth, but Neil is still overwhelmed. Kissing Andrew makes Neil feel alive in a way that few things ever have. It makes Neil’s blood sing like every goal he’s ever scored combined into one. Neil wants to grab hold of this feeling and hold it close to his heart forever. 

Neil doesn’t notice Andrew’s hand has moved away from his shirt until Andrew breaks the kiss, and the needy sound that slips from the back of Neil’s throat at the loss of contact cuts through the silence between them. 

“I hate you,” Andrew grumbles, tugging the pillow from in between them and tossing it aside before flopping onto his back near the center of the mattress and looking over to Neil. 

There’s no heat to his words though, and Neil has come to think of it as a simple endearment. He scoots closer to Andrew reaching his hand out, palm up, into the space between them, and responds simply, “I know.” 

Andrew looks at Neil’s bandaged hand for a second and scoffs before he reaches out to take it, tangling their fingers together. Neil has to bite back a fond little smile when Andrew scoots closer again, and uses his free hand to shove at Neil’s shoulder, pushing until Neil is laid out flat on his back and Andrew can throw a leg across his waist. 

Neil blinks up at Andrew where he’s perched atop him and has to remind himself to breathe, even when his heart feels like it is about to beat out of his chest at any moment. 

Andrew reaches for Neil’s free hand, and pauses a few inches away, furrowing his brows in thought. He opens his mouth to say something but before he can get the words out, Neil answers, “It’s still yes, Andrew.” Andrew’s glare is unimpressed, but he takes Neil’s answer in stride, grabbing hold of his other hand and leaning back down to press an open-mouthed kiss to the edge of Neil’s jaw. 

Neil’s never held hands with anyone before. It always seemed unappealing—sweaty and sticky and too intimate for what was supposed to be a casual touch—but Andrew’s hands fit perfectly in his own, their fingers slotting together seamlessly as Andrew pins him against the mattress. The back of Neil’s hands press into the mattress when Andrew uses his grip as leverage to lean over Neil, straddling his hips. 

The feeling is familiar in a sickening way, and for a second Neil is thrown back to his time at Castle Evermore—if he closes his eyes he can still feel the ache in his shoulders from being handcuffed to a headboard. The only other time he’s been pinned in place like this, it was the heavy weight of Jean Moreau sitting on his thighs, holding him down while Riko Moriyama carved into Neil’s flesh with a sharp blade. 

Andrew must feel the way Neil goes still beneath him, frozen by the memory as it washes through him, because he tries to pull his hands out of Neil’s, making as though he’s going to move away. Neil stops him, squeezing Andrew’s hands tight in his own, the feeling of solid bone and flesh between his fingers grounding him in the moment as his eyes flutter open. Andrew, who has never once been gentle with Neil, is still hovering over him, eyes piercing through Neil with a cold, unyielding stare. 

Andrew, who carries knives in his arm bands; who holds every one of his enemies at the tip of a blade, and beats men within an inch of their life when they’d attack his family; who killed his own mother to keep a brother he barely knew safe; who has kissed Neil so fiercely that Neil aches with the memory alone, and taken Neil to pieces with careful hands and a devoted mouth. 

Andrew is violent when he needs to be, and volatile the rest of the time–he has never been gentle with Neil, but he’s never hurt him either. This, Neil thinks, is the difference between men like Andrew and Riko: Andrew may have the ability to do terrible things, but he isn’t prone to cruelty for cruelty's sake. 

So while Andrew’s weight pushing him down into the mattress is familiar, this is the first time Neil has been in this position and not been in danger. Andrew’s hands are firm and commanding, yes, but if Neil were uncomfortable–if he asked Andrew to stop–Andrew would in a heartbeat. 

Neil doesn’t say anything, and Andrew doesn’t ask. Instead, Andrew takes the way that Neil tilts his chin up as an invitation to press another kiss to Neil’s lips. Neil gives in to Andrew easily, mouth parting on a sigh that Andrew uses to deepen the kiss. 

Neil is too wrapped up in the slide of Andrew’s tongue against his own and the way that Andrew’s teeth scrape against his bottom lip to notice when Andrew untangles their fingers. He does, however, notice the absence when he lets out a soft groan at the way Andrew grinds down on him, and his hands grab at empty air. 

He reaches up instinctively, desperately searching for purchase on something solid, but pauses before his fingers find their target and lets his hands hover a few inches from Andrew’s head. Andrew’s lips moves to Neil’s jaw and he places an open-mouthed kiss to Neil’s neck before muttering “ _yes_ ,” into the sensitive skin behind his ear. 

Neil hisses out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in and tangles his fingers into Andrew’s hair, working them between loose waves of golden-blonde. A jolt of pain shoots through Neil’s arms with the movement, but he lets it ground him–a reminder of all that he has gone through to make it to this point. 

In time the bandages that wrap around Neil’s fingers and snake up his arms will come off and Neil will have new scars to bear, but it seems so distant to Neil right now, with Andrew’s solid weight above him. The scrape of Andrew’s teeth across Neil’s neck is a reminder of the here and now, and the way he ruches Neil’s shirt up under his arms to drag rough fingers across Neil’s chest makes goosebumps race across Neil’s body. 

Neil’s fingers tighten in Andrew’s hair and Andrew shoots him a warning look from where his mouth is pressed to Neil’s sternum. For as cold as the look is, Neil doesn’t feel the ice in his veins. All he feels is heat in his chest, almost scalding where it coils behind his ribs. 

Determination courses through Neil as he digs his fingertips into Andrew’s scalp, guiding his head back up so that Neil can kiss him again. He tries to use the feeling of Andrew’s mouth against his own to suppress the fire inside of him, but it only serves to add fuel to the flames. 

Maybe, Neil realizes, he’s supposed to burn–a baptism by fire. 

Neil gives himself over to Andrew’s administrations, and the blaze which overtakes him leaves him numb. He can’t feel his mouth where it’s pressed to Andrew’s, or his hands where they’re tangled in Andrew’s hair. It feels like they’ve been tangled together for a lifetime, and could stay like this for a lifetime more. 

Andrew pulls away when he notices Neil’s boneless state, and Neil blinks up at him slowly, clearing the haze from his eyes. He studies Neil closely, looking at him as though he’ll disappear if Andrew so much as blinks. 

“Neil…” Andrew’s voice is quiet but hoarse, and Neil offers him a weak smile at the unspoken question. 

“I’m fine,” Neil says, and for once it’s not a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hey any time on [twitter](https://twitter.com/cosmicbeebees)! i would love to make some aftg friends


End file.
